Ian C. Kelly is a former statesman and foreign service officer who has spent the majority of his career representing the United States in southern and eastern Europe. He served as U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) from 2010 to 2013 and as U.S. ambassador to Georgia from 2015 to 2018. Prior to his ambassadorships, Kelly directed the Office of Russian Affairs in Washington D.C. and spent twenty years in a variety of influential foreign service positions that took him to Italy, Turkey, the former Yugoslavia, and the former Soviet Union, where he played a key role in post-Cold War transitions. Kelly holds a doctorate in Slavic languages and literatures from Columbia University. In April 2018, he became a professor of international studies and Slavic literatures at Northwestern University.